On Psychospiritual Flow

[davidsun]

Originally Posted by inavalan

That's how some scientists work. They don't ask themselves: does this result make sense? If you google, you'll find claims all over the place, some being of only 50 bits / second. Ridiculous, but dangerous.

PS: Not even the brains of those scientists are so slow ...

You clearly think you consciously register each and every one of the 'bits' that go into composing a TV screen image. Brilliant!

I personally find Mihaly's human-brain data-based conclusion fairly convincing.

[davidsun]

Originally Posted by MAYA EL

... giving knowledge for others to look to for any kind of help is a bit like telling someone they have a stain on there shirt at first it's just a kind jester until you flick there nose which makes them spill coffee on there shirt and now the really do have a stain.

I 'get' that you find my sharing of my perspective 'insulting' because you think it necessarily means that I think that you (and others) are intellectually deficient.

This strikes me as being like a person being offered a hammer and some nails or a saw and some wood thinking that such offer and accompanying suggestion/recommendation that such insyruments might be useful and so experimentally worth trying out implied that her/his screw driver and set of screws were defective and/or deficient?

My understanding ('knowledge') is that any/all 'culture' is based on shared 'knowledge', 'shared' meaning appreciated 'in common'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture

I sincerely hope you can see that my stating this is no more 'stain' implying than your clearly (IMO) disparaging of my 'shtick' statements.

[BigJohn]

Originally Posted by davidsun

You clearly think you consciously register each and every one of the 'bits' that go into composing a TV screen image. Brilliant!

I personally find Mihaly's human-brain data-based conclusion fairly convincing.

All I asked was for the math to be rechecked. The figures seem to be extremely far off.

When you watch TV, do you see what is on the screen or do you see just a little 'bit' of the screen? You see the whole screen. Do you have any idea what 126 bits of data per second looks like? It is not much! At a refresh rate of 120 HZ, that is just a little over 1 bit of data being displayed at a time.

And then, you also listen to what is being broadcasted.

A person can easily calculate how many bits of data are being put on the TV screen per second and they can also calculate how many bits of sound data is also being transmitted.

Another question is:
Why is this information looked at as binary data? The data is analog.

[davidsun]

(Mihalyi excerpt Post 4)

ENTER THE SELF

But what do those first-person pronouns refer to in the lines above, those we s and ours that are supposed to control attention? Where is the I, the entity that decides what to do with the psychic energy generated by the nervous system? Where does the captain of the ship, the master of the soul, reside?

As soon as we consider these questions for even a short while, we realize that the [i]I, or the self as we shall refer to it from now on, is also one of the contents of consciousness. It is one that never strays very far from the focus of attention. Of course my own self exists solely in my own consciousness; in that of others who know me there will be versions of it, most of them probably unrecognizable likenesses of the ‘original’—myself as I see me.

The self is no ordinary piece of information, however. In fact, it contains everything else that has passed through consciousness: all the memories, actions, desires, pleasures, and pains are included in it. And more than anything else, the self represents the hierarchy of goals that we have built up, bit by bit, over the years. The self of the political activist may become indistinguishable from his ideology, the self of the banker may become wrapped up in his investments. Of course, ordinarily we do not think of our self in this way. At any given time, we are usually aware of only a tiny part of it, as when we become conscious of how we look, of what impression we are making, or of what we really would like to do if we could. We most often associate our self with our body, though sometimes we extend its boundaries to identify it with a car, house, or family. Yet however much we are aware of it, the self is in many ways the most important element of consciousness, for it represents symbolically all of [one’s] consciousness’s other contents, as well as the pattern of their interrelations.

The patient reader who has followed the argument so far might detect at this point a faint trace of circularity. If attention, or psychic energy, is directed by the self, and if the self is the sum of the contents of consciousness and the structure of its goals, and if the contents of consciousness and the goals are the result of different ways of investing attention, then we have a system that is going round and round, with no clear causes or effects. At one point we are saying that the self directs attention, at another, that attention determines the self. In fact, both these statements are true: consciousness is not a strictly linear system, but one in which circular causality obtains. Attention shapes the self, and is in turn shaped by it.

An example of this type of causality is the experience of Sam Browning, one of the adolescents we have followed in our longitudinal research studies. Sam went to Bermuda for a Christmas holiday with his father when he was fifteen. At the time, he had no idea of what he wanted to do with his life; his self was relatively unformed, without an identity of its own. Sam had no clearly differentiated goals; he wanted exactly what other boys his age are supposed to want, either because of their genetic programs or because of what the social environment told them to want—in other words, he thought vaguely of going to college, then later finding some kind of well-paying job, getting married, and living somewhere in the suburbs. In Bermuda, Sam’s father took him on an excursion to a coral barrier, and they dove underwater to explore the reef. Sam couldn’t believe his eyes. He found the mysterious, beautifully dangerous environment so enchanting that he decided to become more familiar with it. He ended up taking a number of biology courses in high school, and is now in the process of becoming a marine scientist.

In Sam’s case an accidental event imposed itself on his consciousness: the challenging beauty of life in the ocean. He had not planned to have this experience; it was not the result of his self or his goals having directed attention to it. But once he became aware of what went on undersea, Sam liked it—the experience resonated with previous things he had enjoyed doing, with feelings he had about nature and beauty, with priorities about what was important that he had established over the years. He felt the experience was something good, something worth seeking out again. Thus he built this accidental event into a structure of goals—to learn more about the ocean, to take courses, to go on to college and graduate school, to find a job as a marine biologist—which became a central element of his self. From then on, his goals directed Sam’s attention to focus more and more closely on the ocean and on its life, thereby closing the circle of causality.

At first attention helped to shape his self, when he noticed the beauties of the underwater world he had been exposed to by accident; later, as he intentionally sought knowledge in marine biology, his self began to shape his attention. There is nothing very unusual about Sam’s case, of course; most people develop their attentional structures in similar ways.

At this point, almost all the components needed to understand how consciousness can be controlled are in place. We have seen that experience depends on the way we invest psychic energy—on the structure of attention. This, in turn, is related to goals and intentions. These processes are connected
to each other by the self, or the dynamic mental representation we have of the entire system of our goals. These are the pieces that must be maneuvered if we wish to improve things. Of course, existence can also be improved by outside events, like winning a million dollars in the lottery, marrying the right man or woman, or helping to change an unjust social system. But even these marvelous events must take their place in consciousness, and be connected in positive ways to our self, before they can affect the quality of life.

The structure of consciousness is beginning to emerge, but so far we have a rather static picture, one that has sketched out the various elements, but not the processes through which they interact. We need now consider what follows whenever attention brings a new bit of information into awareness. Only then will we be ready to get a thorough sense of how experience can be controlled, and hence changed for the better.

Originally Posted by davidsun

I 'get' that you find my sharing of my perspective 'insulting' because you think it necessarily means that I think that you (and others) are intellectually deficient.

This strikes me as being like a person being offered a hammer and some nails or a saw and some wood thinking that such offer and accompanying suggestion/recommendation that such insyruments might be useful and so experimentally worth trying out implied that her/his screw driver and set of screws were defective and/or deficient?

My understanding ('knowledge') is that any/all 'culture' is based on shared 'knowledge', 'shared' meaning appreciated 'in common'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture

I sincerely hope you can see that my stating this is no more 'stain' implying than your clearly (IMO) disparaging of my 'shtick' statements.

No it's more like handing someone a broken hammer and bent screws instead of nails

[davidsun]

Originally Posted by MAYA EL

No it's more like handing someone a broken hammer and bent screws instead of nails

I register your assessment of what I 'share'. I often make the same kind of assessment in relation to what others here share as well. I recommend that you focus on meaningfully criticizing (by stating clear 'reasons', not just expressing 'summary' judgments in said regard) what you think are 'broken' and/or 'bent' idea-tools and articulating/contrasting these what you think are more positively functional alternatives, which is what I am aiming to do - in this case in relation to what I 'see' you as doing.

Originally Posted by davidsun

I register your assessment of what I 'share'. I often make the same kind of assessment in relation to what others here share as well. I recommend that you focus on meaningfully criticizing (by stating clear 'reasons', not just expressing 'summary' judgments in said regard) what you think are 'broken' and/or 'bent' idea-tools and articulating/contrasting these what you think are more positively functional alternatives, which is what I am aiming to do - in this case in relation to what I 'see' you as doing.

If I were to do so then that would make me no different then the next person.
My giving my critique and then telling you what you should do instead would imply that I think my opinion is more accurate then yours and that you should do what I say and be like me and that would fix nothing.

Instead what I do is highlight what I feel is a weak point based off of personal experience and let the person know about it and what they choose to do about it is up to them this way if they change and it happens to be an improvement then it is a real improvement and organically made to work with that individual so then the individual is stronger in there understanding and abilities instead of the usual conformity to Society that we see to often.

[davidsun]

Originally Posted by MAYA EL

If I were to do so then that would make me no different then the next person.
My giving my critique and then telling you what you should do instead would imply that I think my opinion is more accurate then yours and that you should do what I say and be like me and that would fix nothing.

Instead what I do is highlight what I feel is a weak point based off of personal experience and let the person know about it and what they choose to do about it is up to them this way if they change and it happens to be an improvement then it is a real improvement and organically made to work with that individual so then the individual is stronger in there understanding and abilities instead of the usual conformity to Society that we see to often.

I am NOT suggesting that you simply 'tell' others what to think, feel, believe, do etc. IF you read what I have said closely, you MIGHT 'see' that I am suggesting you recommend that people THINK about what you 'detail' (about what you think, feel, believe, do, etc) and CONSIDER its potential value and applicability in the clongtext of their and others' loves.

I respect that your have and subscribe to your own 'educational philosophy, but object to your simplistically - without meaning-fully ping-pong playing with the ideas I present for consideration - bad-mouthing mine.

You have said nothing substantial about the ideas Mihaly has presented, which I have shared oin this thread, for instance.

Originally Posted by davidsun

I am NOT suggesting that you simply 'tell' others what to think, feel, believe, do etc. IF you read what I have said closely, you MIGHT 'see' that I am suggesting you recommend that people THINK about what you 'detail' (about what you think, feel, believe, do, etc) and CONSIDER its potential value and applicability in the clongtext of their and others' loves.

I respect that your have and subscribe to your own 'educational philosophy, but object to your simplistically - without meaning-fully ping-pong playing with the ideas I present for consideration - bad-mouthing mine.

You have said nothing substantial about the ideas Mihaly has presented, which I have shared oin this thread, for instance.

If you read what I have said you will see that I have answered this comment already.
People seem to expect information positive and negative) to be presented in a manner that they are used to and that they approve of and that is not very realistic especially because that person would not grow in understanding and wisdom if everything was presented to them in a way that they pre approve of likewise the way I present things may not fit your criteria but that is fine.

Also if I am understanding you correctly you are saying as long as I put a disclaimer on each of my comments that says "please take what I say into consideration and contemplation/ tech" you'll be ok with what I say?.

[davidsun]

Originally Posted by MAYA EL

If you read what I have said you will see that I have answered this comment already.
People seem to expect information positive and negative) to be presented in a manner that they are used to and that they approve of and that is not very realistic especially because that person would not grow in understanding and wisdom if everything was presented to them in a way that they pre approve of likewise the way I present things may not fit your criteria but that is fine.

Backatcha, Maya!

Originally Posted by MAYA EL

Also if I am understanding you correctly you are saying as long as I put a disclaimer on each of my comments that says "please take what I say into consideration and contemplation/ tech" you'll be ok with what I say?.

No - I am already OK with what you say because I already take what you say into consideration and contemplate how best to relate to it.

I ask that you do the same in relation to what I 'say' (write).